Terrorism Database: Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube Partner To Share Info

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are teaming up to curb online terrorism content, the companies announced on Monday.

The tech giants will create a shared database of “hashes” to help them track violent terrorist imagery and terrorist recruitment videos or images that have been removed from their services. The companies will use the shared data to help identify potential terrorist content on the sites.

Other participating companies can then use those hashes on the database to identify terrorist-related content on their services, review against their respective policies and definitions and remove matching content.

“There is no place for content that promotes terrorism on our hosted consumer services,” the companies said in a statement.

“We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online,” the companies added.

The tech firms will independently determine what image or video hashes should be shared in the database. They say no personally identifiable information will be shared, and matching content will not be automatically removed.

Social media has been a tool for terrorists, including ISIS. The four companies agreed in May to European regulations that require them to review the majority of reports and remove illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove it if necessary. The rule was agreed on to combat hate speech and terrorist propaganda across the EU.

Back in February, Twitter announced it suspended 125,000 accounts for promoting terrorism.

The tech companies say they will focus on involving additional companies in the future.